Eight 'pirates' of Russian, Latvian and Estonian nationality have been
arrested for the hijacking of the cargo ship Arctic Sea in Swedish waters.

Following the arrests, which took place on board the ship, Anatoly Serdyukov, the Russian defence minister, has given more details of events surrounding the mystery vessel and its diversion to west Africa by the hijackers.

"These people, after claiming that their boat was not working, boarded the Arctic Sea and using the threat of arms, demanded that the crew follow all of their orders without condition," he said.

"Then the Arctic Sea moved on to an African route indicated by the aggressors to after turning off navigation equipment."

Mr Serdyukov added that the operation to rescue the crew was accomplished without a shot being fired.

"Eight people - not members of the crew - have been detained," he said.

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The suspects, who boarded the ship in Swedish waters, include four Estonian citizens, two Latvians and two Russian nationals.

The missing cargo freighter was found by a Russian warship off the coast of the Cape Verde islands west Africa on Monday. At that time the ship was not "under the armed control" of hijackers or pirates.

This morning, crew members are on their way to the Cape Verde island of Sal where they will board a Russian military plane bound for Moscow.

The arrests appear to confirm reports from the ship's 15 Russian crew members of an armed boarding in the Baltic Sea in Sweish national waters off the Gotland province on July 24.

The hijackers, according to crew members, held the vessel for 12 hours, subjected them to violent questioning and "went through the ship with a fine-tooth comb".

The attackers were then thought to have left the ship.

The Arctic Sea then baffled maritime authorities when it disappeared shortly after being sailed through the English Channel last month raising the prospect of the first act of piracy in European waters for hundreds of years.

Russian authorities have not given information on the precise circumstances of the ship's interception near Cape Verde, some 2500 miles away from the vessel's intended location.

The naval operation, which took place at 21:00 GMT on Sunday night, followed a weekend of joint Russia-Nato surveillance of the "hijacked" Maltese flagged ship culminating in its detention by the Russian anti-submarine frigate, the Ladny.

The freighter's disappearance on the high-seas for 19 days, in spite of 21st century satellite and navigation tracking technology, has been compared to the plot of spy thrillers by John Le Carre.

European and Russian maritime experts had speculated that that the ship's hijacking was not connected with an official manifest of timber and could be linked to an illegal cargo, such as arms, drugs or even nuclear materials, carried without the knowledge of crew or the ship's owners.

The vessel left the Finnish port of Pietarsaari, on July 23, with a routine cargo of 6,700 cubic metres, worth GBP1.2 million, of sawn timber for scheduled unloading on Aug 4 at Bejaia's docks, in Algeria.

But the Arctic Seas's voyage was then plunged into unknown after the crew reported the first boarding in Swedish waters.

Until Monday, the last contact with the Arctic Sea a routine radio check by British coastguards on the vessel as it entered the English Channel on Jul 28.

The communication with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, which appeared to be normal, came four days after the Arctic Sea's Russian crew members had reported the armed boarding to managers based in Finland.

For unknown reasons, and according to Maltese maritime officials, the reported attack was not communicated to the police in Helsinki until Jul 28, too late for British coastguards to be alerted to the existence of a possibly hijacked vessel in the English Channel.

After going through the English Channel, a final signal from the vessel's automatic identification system (AIS) on July 30 placed the "pirate" ship 50 miles south of Penzance.

According to European Union officials a second attack was then reported off the Portuguese coast and the ship's AIS system was switched off.

Last week, Russian navy vessels, including the Ladny frigate and two nuclear submarines, were mobilised following reports of the vessel's hijacking.

The Arctic Sea was then spotted by coastguards on Aug 14 in international waters 500 miles off the West African island archipelago of Cape Verde and the vessel was placed under ongoing surveillance by Russian and Nato military.

Finnish police investigators confirmed this weekend that a ransom demand, said to be around GBP900,000 had been received by the Arctic Sea's Russian owners.